Posts Tagged ‘Yoga’

Five years ago a new wave of yoga studios began to open in gentrifying neighborhoods all across DC. Now the studios are going beyond teaching beginners, as young women disillusioned by the deadening nature of professional work in Washington, DC, turn to yoga studios for deeper meaning.

The Washington Postprofiles the graduation ceremony of a Studio DC200 hour program. Sixteen young women dressed in white, like brides or candidates for Christian confirmation, walk down a candle-lit aisle strewn with red rose petals. Heady with spiritual commitment and fellowship, they cry, laugh and hug, as studio owners Katja Brandis, and husband Ryan Arnoldy, also in white, look on.

DC has one of the fastest growing yoga communities in the nation. The North American Studio Alliance, a trade group of sorts that is better known as NAMASTA, estimates that the number of yoga professionals has grown by more than 200 percent here in the past five years, writes the Post.

What does it take, other than a trust fund, to be a yoga teacher in DC?

If we can inspire and encourage students to move (safely) beyond their limitations, we will have done what our teachers once did for us, and in this way, we render the magic [spiritual guru] Krishnamacharya’s wisdom, writes Kaivalya.

Yoga and author Ayn Rand [Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead] have both spawned subcultures of devotees because Americans are individualists who belong to the church of self-improvement. Lululemon’s campaign is startling. (Slate)

Scientists at the Anderson Cancer Center studied sixty-one women with stage zero through three breast cancer. The women were broken into three groups while undergoing radiation treatment. The first group was given twice-weekly yoga classes, which emphasized breathing and relaxation and integrated poses designed by Indian yogis especially for patients with a possibly limited range of motion. The other two groups of women were either given stretching exercises or were not given any special exercise program. The results of the study were reported at the 42nd annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology by Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., director of the Integrative Medicine Program at M. D. Anderson. Dr. Cohen collaborated with Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, India’s largest yoga research institution, in Bangalore.

After one week of yoga and radiation, the women in the first group reported feeling better than the other women, had less trouble sleeping and had lower levels of stress hormone. The yoga group had the “steepest decline in their cortisol across the day, indicating that yoga had the ability to regulate this stress hormone,” according to a report in The Independent of the study.

Downward Facing Dog for the Cure

The scientists are planning a new study to further investigate the link between yoga and better health in breast cancer patients. Participants in next month’s Race for the Cure on the Mall might also consider offering the gift of a yoga practice to their loved ones. for the Cure is the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists and has raised and invested almost $2 billion toward fighting breast cancer. The three-mile run leaves from the Mall Saturday morning, June 4.

Prana Flow® is a trademarked style of yoga developed by California yoga master, Shiva Rae. Though the Indian government has not cited a specific American school of yoga, it has filmed hundreds of yoga poses and registered them with international patent offices. Its goal is to stop American and European entrepreneurs from patenting yoga poses and advertising they have created new types of yoga. This week it also signed an agreement with the Japanese Patent Office.

says Vinod Kumar Gupta, who runs the Indian government’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library which is heading the effort.

As American as Aerobics and Revival Meetings

Almost 16 million American adults practice yoga, spending $5.7 billion a year on yoga classes and products, according to a study released three years ago by Yoga Journal. Americans practice everything from Christian yoga and Jewish yoga to Naked Yoga and Laughter Yoga. The U.S. Patent Office has issued more than 130 yoga-related patents (most for merchandise), 150 copyrights and 2,300 trademarks related to yoga. Most of copyrights and trademarks are for yoga-studio branding and training manuals; none is for individual poses.

The firestorm over yoga ownership was lit in 2004 in Beverly Hills when Calcutta-born Bikram Choudhury claimed ownership of a sequence of 26 postures he called Bikram Yoga practiced by students in a hot room. He tried to collect money from other studios that also offered “Hot Yoga” classes, according to The Washington Post. So far no one in the U.S. has patented a yoga pose.

“If copyrights have been granted on works depicting the yoga practices of concern, the rights granted would be limited to prohibiting others from copying instructional videos or books used to teach the yoga moves or positions,”

wrote patent attorney Joseph Breimayer in a blog post.

“Copyright cannot be used to prohibit teaching or performing the moves or positions by someone who has learned to do so using the copyrighted materials.”

For Indian Eyes Only

India is releasing 30 to 40 of the yoga videos to the public, says Gupta. The government will not allow yoga practitioners to see or use most poses, many of which he says have been culled from ancient Sanskrit texts.

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DC Yoga Insider is published for people interested in yoga who live in and around Washington, D.C. What You Will Find Hot Classes: Upcoming workshops, retreats, specials classes and teacher training programs in the D.C. Metropolitan area. Studios and Gurus: A directory of studios, yoga lineages and yoga teachers. News: ... Continue reading →

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